


Anthony Kennedy Appreciation Day

by Gohandinhand



Series: All in the Golden Afternoon [1]
Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-28
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-06 14:23:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4225188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gohandinhand/pseuds/Gohandinhand
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Thanks for waking me up, Chlo.”<br/>“Well, I couldn’t let you just wake up with new rights, Bec.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

“Beca! BECA!” Beca groaned and shifted, throwing her left arm over her face

“Chloe, I swear to god, it is too early for you to be jumping on the bed.” Beca mumbled, then – “OOF. Dammit, Chlo, I am not a landing pad.” Chloe just laughed and grabbed Beca’s face between her hands, grinning and lowering her face so their noses almost touched when Beca cracked one eye open to glare at her.

“Becs. I know it’s only nine thirty and you didn’t get home from your gig last night until past four because I heard you trip over the rug in the hallway again when you came in but you have to get up. Right now. Up.”

“No. Go ‘way. I hate you.” Beca muttered, throwing her free arm (the other trapped under where Chloe had haphazardly thrown herself across the bed) across her eyes and pouting. Chloe, irrepressible as always, just laughed and started poking Beca in the cheek.

Knowing from past experience that Chloe wouldn’t stop until Beca gave in, she bowed to inevitability. Opening her eyes, Beca fixed her with a glare. “Ugh. What is so important that I have to get up right now?”

Chloe was practically vibrating with excitement. “It looks like the Supreme Court might announce today. Soon.”

“Announce? Wha- Oh! Oh my god. You mean the marriage equality thing? I read that they were going to wait until Monday?”

“I mean, they might, but it could also be today and I just want us to hear about it together either way, so please get out of bed and put some pants on. I have breakfast for you in the kitchen and then I need you to hold my hand while we watch the live feed.” Very awake now and way past the point of arguing, Beca sat up and nodded wordlessly. Chloe gave a soft smile at Beca’s wide eyes, leaning forward to kiss her on the forehead gently, before rising and leaving the bedroom.

A few minutes later, Beca – now clad in her favorite worn and comfy Barden U sweatpants and donning one of Chloe’s favorite flannels over her tank top – padded softly into the kitchen. Spotting Chloe on a stool at the counter, nursing a coffee and staring at her laptop intently, Beca slid up behind her, slipping her arms around Chloe’s waist and resting her head on Chloe’s shoulder. Still focused in front of her, Chloe’s hand absentmindedly came up to Beca’s hair, winding a loose curl around her finger. Beca’s eyes found the clock, swallowing loudly when she saw the time.  
  
“Ten, right, Chlo?” Beca questioned softly, finally bringing Chloe out of her reverie.  
  
“Yeah. So… fourteen minutes left. Your breakfast is over next to the stove.” Chloe finished, motioning with her hand. Beca let out a dry chuckle in response.  
  
“I don’t… I don’t really want to eat right now. Yet.”  
  
Knowing that Beca turning down food is a highly unusual occurrence, Chloe spins around in Beca’s arms in surprise, noticing the look on Beca’s face for the first time and realizing just how nervous her girlfriend really is. Leaning in, she pecked Beca on the lips for reassurance, squeaking a bit in shock when Beca pulled her back in to plant another more solid kiss on her lips. Pulling back a short while later finally for air, Chloe gave an appraising glance as Beca tensed up again. Correctly interpreting the need for contact that Beca desired but rarely asked for, Chloe suggested they move to the couch, relieved when Beca easily agreed instead of being stubborn.

 

Settling into the couch together, Beca snuggled into her side while Chloe flipped on the TV, changing the station to CNN and letting it run on a low drone, and settled back with the computer on their laps.  
  
“You okay, Becs?” Releasing the lip she’d been chewing on, Beca opened her mouth to reply, then snapped it shut again and shrugged.  
  
“I… Yeah. I’m just nervous. I mean, it’s not like our lives won’t go on exacty like they have been if they wait until Monday or if the decision doesn’t go the way we’re hoping, I just… I don’t know, Chlo. I’m just anxious.”  
  
Squeezing their clasped hands in a show of support, Chloe gave Beca an understanding smile, and then their attention was dragged back to the computer as they were alerted to the five-minute buzzer. Chloe emitted a high-pitched sound Beca had never heard before – stress? Excitement? Both, probably – and then their phones chimed in unison.  
  
“It’s Aubrey.” Chloe reported. “She’s at work for a half-day but the whole firm is watching too.” Not replying to Chloe’s words, Beca pointed at the SCOTUSblog feed.  
  
“Four boxes, Chlo. They say ‘lots of opinions, long ones, or both’. Is that… there’s 5 cases left, right? Oh god, I’m so nervous. Ask Aubrey if this is a good thing or not.”  
  
Chloe laughed, then did as asked. A slight delay, and then, “Aubrey has no firm answer, Becs. Sorry. She says 4 boxes could mean they’re handing down all 5, or there was a lot of disagreement on something.”  
  
Beca grimaced, then turned back to the feed. Others were asking questions on the livestream, and Beca’s eyes widened as she noted that there were 54,000 other people watching the updates.  
  
“Holy shit, Chlo. Look. Guess we’re not alone.” Chloe merely laughed in response, then pressed a tiny kiss to Beca’s cheek.  
  
“You’re so cute. Of course not. Check your phone, Becs.” Puzzled, Beca scooped her mobile up, just now remembering that hers had chimed with incoming messages when Chloe’s had – and Chloe watched a slow grin spread across her face as she unlocked it.  
  
“They’re such dorks!” Beca muttered fondly as she went to write back; it was the Bella group chat, a long-standing tradition that all of the girls had kept up with until present day, even with several years having passed since graduation. Stacie and Amy were both “pre-gaming”, Cynthia Rose and her wife camped out at brunch with some of their friends from the LGBT charity where they worked, and even the rest of the girls stuck at work had joined in the group chat to keep updated on what was going on (and send suggestive comments, obviously, thank you Ashley). Finishing tapping out her message – “’Pre-gaming’ is just alcoholism at this time of day” – Beca turned back to the screen, biting her lip when she read that the stream was laying low while they waited for the opinions to come rolling in.  
  
Grabbing Chloe’s hand again, she huddled into Chloe’s side again, half hiding her face behind the taller girl. “I can’t look, Chlo. Just tell me.”  
  
The sat in tense silence for a minute, Chloe staring daggers at the screen, afraid to blink as if that would make her miss the update. Finally, she let out a little shriek, and Beca shuddered.  
  
“The first one is marriage, oh my god. Kennedy has the opinion… Beca. Look. BECA!” Pulling her head up at Chloe’s tone, she saw Chloe grin, then point at the screen. Turning to the feed, Beca scanned the latest update, and then slowly read it out loud, letting the words sink in.  
  
“Holding… Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex.”  
  
Stunned, Chloe and Beca grinned at each other before Beca grabbed Chloe’s head and tugged her in for a smacking kiss.  
  
“Wait, there’s more! ‘And to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when a marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out of state.’ Oh my god, Chlo. It actually happened.” Beca whispered against Chloe’s lips, before doing something Chloe had never ever seen Beca do at any point in the last seven years: She threw her head back, hands up in the air, let out a whoop of joy and, to Chloe’s disbelieving eyes, started some sort of shimmying, shaking victory dance. Stunned into silence, she simply watched for a few seconds, then broke into laughter herself and tugged Beca up off the couch before joining in with her own interpretation of a victory dance.  
  
Chloe had rarely seen Beca this carefree and willing to be open about her feelings and excitement, and she was more than happy to join in with her own as encouragement. Laughing, they swung each other around the room until the repeated chiming of their phones pulled them back to earth. Chloe scooped up her phone, still giggling breathlessly, then laughingly reported back to Beca.  
  
“Aubrey says-“  
  
“Is she still primly refusing to call it anything but Obergefell v. Hodges?” Chloe gave Beca a mock glare for the interruption before a smile cracked her lips as she nodded in answer.  
  
“I was SAYING, Aubrey says…. Actually that doesn’t matter, lots of legal stuff about the dissents and everything, but congratulations, mostly. Stacie is urging us into alcoholism also and then I think – well, I’m going to call that wordless excitement because I can’t tell if everybody else is drunk or just too excited to type correctly.”  
  
Beca laughed giddily, sitting back down on the couch in front of Chloe’s laptop and scrolling through the feed quickly. Noting with a tiny tingle of fear how close the 5-4 decision was, Beca sat back and sighed.  
  
“By the skin of our teeth, Chlo.”  
  
“By the hair on our chinny chin chins?”  
  
“Is that an insult?”  
  
“Not for me, I tweezed.”  
  
Beca snorted out a laugh and tugged a pillow from next to her to lob at Chloe, who swatted it away easily. Sticking her tongue out in response, Beca turned back to the computer to check the live feed again. Despite finding the rest of the information a little boring – the legal minutiae was really Aubrey’s area – she scrolled half-heartedly through the updates for a short while before giving up.  
  
“I’m going to have breakfast now. Do you want any more coffee or anything, Chlo?”  
  
“Mmmm, no, although I’m kind of thinking of joining Stacie and Amy in celebrating…”  
  
“Chloe. It is barely 10am.”  
  
“Yeah, and our relationship has just been legalized across the entire country.”  
  
“… I see your point. Wine?”

 

A couple of minutes later, Chloe joined Beca at the table, Beca with her pile of pancakes and both with a glass of wine in front of them. Grinning – Beca’s face was starting to hurt and she was starting to worry her face might be permanently stuck in this smile but she was just so excited – they raised their glasses in a toast, clinking them together before taking a gulp.  
  
“Thanks for waking me up, Chlo.”  
  
“Well, I couldn’t let you just wake up with new rights, Bec.”  
  
Tucking into her pancakes, Beca chewed for a few seconds, then grimaced.  
  
“Okay, so the ‘no wine at breakfast’ rule generally observed in our country might actually be a taste thing.” Wordlessly, Chloe reached across the table and snagged Beca’s glass of wine, draining that cup too. Beca quirked an eyebrow at her again – Chloe was far from a lightweight, but downing two glasses of wine by 10:30 in the morning still wasn’t exactly a common occurrence.  
  
“What? Just celebrating. I don’t have my jiggle juice so this will have to do.” Chloe responded, aiming a wink at Beca. Shrugging, Beca returned to demolishing her lukewarm breakfast. Chloe sat with her in contemplative silence, the only noise the scraping of Beca’s fork across her plate.  
  
“Beca.” Chloe’s serious tone alerted her and she looked up from her plate, a forkful of pancakes suspended midair. Chloe watched as a bit of the syrup (always applied too liberally, in her opinion, but it was the only way Beca would eat them) dripped back to the plate, momentarily mesmerized. Shaking her head, Chloe pulled her attention back to Beca’s apprehensive face. “We should get married.”  
  
Beca’s mouth gaped open as she tried to find the words for Chloe’s sudden proposition, Chloe cutting her off before she could get any of them out.  
  
“No, I’m being serious. I mean, we’ve talked about it before, the only reason we haven’t been engaged and planning a wedding already is because we haven’t been able to do it here and we didn’t want to make everyone travel out of state…”  
  
Beca carefully put her fork back down on her plate and looked at Chloe steadily. Chloe shifts in her seat, knowing that taking Beca off guard with anything big and particularly anything emotional is a risky move.  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“I… sorry, what?” Chloe’s mouth gaped open.  
  
“I said okay. Yes. Let’s do it.”

 

Most of the time Beca’s kind of certain Chloe is literally magic, for obvious reasons. She was convinced those bright blue eyes could literally shine, like, with their own power source, and Chloe’s subtle methods of bending Beca to her will obviously had to be backed by spells of some sort. But as soon as Beca’s agreement sunk in to Chloe’s brain, she was pretty sure she could see her girlfriend’s eyes literally SPARKLING, which, what the fuck. Only Chloe Beale.  
  
Chloe Mitchell?  
  
Chloe’s squeal broke into Beca’s train of thought (and narrowly missed breaking the windows too; Beca’s pretty sure human voices should not be able to make that sound) and she winces, rubbing one of her ears.  
  
“OHMYGOD!” Chloe shrieked again, jumping out of her chair. She ran around the table, planting a kiss on Beca’s face – oblivious to the power behind it making Beca lose her balance and almost fall off her chair. “Okay. We have to get ready. What are we going to wear? What about my hair, and oh my god, my nails are a mess-“  
  
“Chloe. Wait. Whoa. You want to do this TODAY? I thought you meant, like, in the future. Like, ‘let’s be a normal engaged couple now’.” At Chloe’s pout, Beca hurried to explain. “Not that I wouldn’t love to marry you today, because I totally would, but there are a few… logistical things to consider. You know your mom will happily murder you if you run off and get married without involving your family. We’ll have to look and see if it’s even possible for us to get a marriage license right away, anyway.”  
  
Beca could see the clear burst of logic settling into Chloe, dimming the haze of excitement in her eyes.  
  
Chloe pouted at her, the typical “you’re right but I don’t want to admit it and you should humor me,” pout Beca was so used to. “Becaaaaa. I just want to do something big to celebrate today! Drinking at 10am doesn’t count because I know what we both got up to in college.”  
  
Beca thought for a second, then grabbed her phone and started typing. After a minute, she grinned in triumph.  
“Okay. Compromise. Call your mom today and ask her about everyone coming to visit in the next few days? And you and I can take a trip down to the courthouse today to get a marriage license since it looks like we will be able to get one today.”  
Chloe squealed again (Beca’s pretty sure she’ll be lucky to make it through the day with her hearing intact) and grabbed Beca in a bone-crushing hug.  
  
“Wait a second!” Chloe hopped out of her chair and ran into the other room, where Beca could hear her rummaging through something, then her footsteps pounded back towards the kitchen.  
  
“Here!” Chloe called, brandishing something in her outstretched hand. She skidded to a halt in front of Beca, turning over and opening her hand. In it rested a ring – a tacky, somewhat worn plastic ring that looked like it came from one of the 25-cent machines at a grocery store. Reaching out for Beca’s hand, Chloe giggled a bit.  
  
“I was so not ready to do this today, but this will work – one of the first graders gave it to me a couple of days ago, it was adorable.”  
  
“Chloe!” Beca gasped in mock outrage. “A regifted engagement ring? For shame!”  
  
Chloe wrinkled her nose up at Beca, and Beca grinned and tapped her on the nose fondly, then held out her hand for the ring.  
“Nuh uh, Mitchell. We’re doing this right. I’ve got to put it on there.” Beca sighed and switched hands, holding her left hand out, palm down and fingers slightly spread. Maintaining a facial expression of pure resignation – Beca’s facial expression through a good majority of their interactions, to be honest – Chloe only knew how affected Beca was when she swallowed hard as the ring slipped onto her finger.  
  
And then she laughed. “Um, Chlo.” Beca grabbed the ring with her right hand, wiggling it to show how comically large the ring was on her finger. “We probably could have fit that over my ring and middle fingers? Maybe then it’ll stay…”  
  
“It’s not my fault that you’re a midget and have bitty baby hands, B.” Beca looked at her disapprovingly, but Chloe could see the humor laying right under the surface. When Chloe grinned at her – her excitement unable to be contained – Beca’s answering grin broke through her resolve. Chloe grabbed her phone and slid into the chair with Beca, squishing her to one side – Beca thanking her lucky stars that she was “so midgety” with how common an occurrence Chloe invading her space like this was – and prodded Beca in the side.  
  
“Show off your ring, babe!” Beca grimaced, but obligingly held her left hand up near her face. Chloe turned her head and pressed a loving kiss on the corner of Beca’s mouth, and despite her determination to never smile in a picture unless forced, Beca’s couldn’t help the loving smile that swept her face. In that moment, Chloe took the picture. Chloe was pretty sure it was the best photo she had ever taken.  
  
“Oh my god. We are disgustingly cute.” Beca grumbled when she saw the resulting snap. Undeterred, Chloe hit “share” on the photo and uploaded it to their entire social network.  
  
“I liked it, so I put a ring on it. #lovewins”  
  
The grin Beca had started to think was permanently plastered on her face only slipped when Chloe’s phone started ringing and “Mom” popped up on the caller ID.


	2. Chapter 2

“Chloe, I love you more than anything, but if you got married without telling me I am going to murder you” were the first words out of Elizabeth Beale’s mouth when her daughter answered the phone. Chloe’s mouth gaped open at her mother’s greeting.

“Mom! I would never do that to you!” Beca’s snort was loud enough that the phone picked it up, and her comment even louder.

“Yeah, only because you have other people to put the brakes on your plans.” Chloe swatted at Beca’s arm in response, not dignifying a response, and her mother’s laughter roared out.  
  
“She’s got you pegged, baby.”  
  
“Yeah, whatever.” Chloe grumbled. “We do have something to tell you though, mom…”  
  
“I already saw online – thanks for posting that before telling your own mother, by the way, but I’m so happy! About time Georgia joined this century, even if they had to be forcefully dragged into it.”  
  
“Tell me about it. But mom, Beca and I were wondering if you all would be able to come down in the next couple of days? Adam and Mark too, if they have the time.”  
  
“And what would the purpose of this visit be, honey? Just to spend some time with your loving family?” Chloe could hear her mother’s grin through the phone and rolled her eyes, a habit of Beca’s that had rubbed off on her.  
  
“Mother. Stop. Beca and I aren’t going to get married today since we want everyone to be here, but we are tentatively planning on Monday if you guys can make it down.”  
  
“She really just wants you to make her that lemon cake, Doctor Beale!” Beca called into the phone with a sly grin.  
  
“Beca, I swear, if you don’t cut out that “Doctor Beale” crap I’m going to start calling you ‘DJ Mitchell’ all the time.” Chloe barked out a laugh at Beca’s look of horror as she scrambled to absolve the minor crisis.  
  
“Okay! Never mind. Don’t torture me. I’m leaving you two to it.” Pressing a kiss to Chloe’s cheek and making a smacking noise into the phone, Beca wandered back into the living room. Scooping up her phone, Beca thumbed open the Bellas group message again, scanning over the insanity that had taken place in her absence.  
  
Grinning to herself, she tapped out the message that she knew would provoke new heights of chaos:  
“How do you all feel about accompanying us to the courthouse on Monday? ;)”

 

Within a couple of hours of the announcement, all of the girls had packed into their small apartment to celebrate. When the whole group showed up at the courthouse so Beca and Chloe could procure their marriage license, Beca was half afraid the thin-lipped woman behind the counter was going to throw them all out instead. Beca and Chloe weren’t the only same sex couple there and they all grinned at each other, some of the strangers even passing out hugs and high fives to the other celebrants. The giddy atmosphere was infectious, cranking everyone’s excitement up another level – like the Bellas EVER needed to be wound up. As they exited, Fat Amy roped a random passerby into taking a picture of everyone in front of the courthouse sign; all of the girls crammed messily together, Beca and Chloe squished together in the middle, beaming happily as love pressed in on them from all sides… and Fat Amy tried to haul herself up on the sign which, as it turns out, wasn’t very well secured to the wall.  
  
Well, it wasn’t the irritated clerk who ended up throwing them out, at least.

 

Chloe’s family arrived in town Sunday morning, both of her older brothers included. Beca’s mother had sent a half-hearted “Congratulations, but I won’t be able to make it” – exactly what Beca expected, so she tried to fight off the disappointment – and her dad had sent a guarded acceptance of the invitation, so Beca was giving him a generous 70% chance at actually showing. Her parents hadn’t exactly taken well to the news that their daughter was dating another woman, which was dumb considering they weren’t really religious and her dad was supposed to be a liberal college professor, come _on_ , but it was what it was and Chloe’s tight-knit family had absorbed her into their ranks as soon as the two had come clean about their relationship and Beca was really okay with the situation now, mostly. Chloe’s mom had arrived at their door with a happy squeal of “my girls!”, tight hugs that Beca was now used to due to the lack of physical boundaries apparently being a genetic trait, and – most thankfully – an idea of what they had to do to get ready.  
  
She soothed Beca’s usual shopping grumpiness – “Why do we have to go buy new dresses if we’re not even getting wedding dresses, there are like 14 in your closet already you haven’t even worn yet!” - by smuggling sour gummy worms (Beca’s favorite which had been outlawed for several months on Chloe’s latest healthy eating kick) into the stores in her purse and sneaking them to Beca when Chloe’s back was turned. They finally both picked out a dress, and it grated to admit that Chloe’s fashion sense may have rubbed off on Beca over the years because who the hell would imagine 18 year old Beca ever wearing any dress, let alone the dress that Chloe described as “floaty” that 24 year old Beca had ended up taking home. After being dragged into three shoe stores, Chloe and her mom scampered off to get manicures, leaving Beca thankfully free to head back to the apartment.  
  
Chloe’s brothers were simultaneously very different yet quite similar to their baby sister, and their irrepressible senses of humor had jived quite well with Beca from their first meeting. While Chloe’s dad stayed back at the hotel to take a nap, Adam and Mark joined Beca at the apartment and when Chloe and Elizabeth showed up at home again several hours later, they found the three of them tipsy and playing poker.  
  
Chloe laughed, observing the game. “Guys, at some point you have to admit that Beca is always going to whip your asses at poker.”  
  
Adam moaned. “Noooo, I’ve been practicing! I thought I had a chance this time! Especially with the alcohol I’ve been plying her with…”  
  
Beca pursed her lips at him and shook her head slowly, that patented Beca Mitchell Cocky Smirk that Chloe adored, and she couldn’t help but lean in to press a kiss to Beca’s lips, feeling Beca grin into the kiss.  
  
“Okay. Mom and I are going to make dinner. You guys finish up here, and can someone call dad and tell him to head over here?”

Aubrey ended up joining them for dinner as well – it was very hard not to love Chloe’s family, and the Beales had all but adopted her as another daughter, so there was no chance in hell Aubrey was missing spending time with them while they were in town. After finishing their late meal, the group moved to the living room to continue enjoying each other’s company, Beca quietly observing the rumbling conversations and laughter around her. Intertwining her life with Chloe’s had changed her and given her so much – she now hardly recognized that closed-off and lonely eighteen year old Chloe had first met as herself.  
  
Chloe, noticing from her spot next to Beca on the couch how quiet her fiancée was being, leaned into her and caressed her leg while giving a questioning look. Beca just smiled back, leaning her head on Chloe’s shoulder, and Chloe returned to her conversation with Aubrey reassured with the peacefulness she could feel leaking from Beca. Only when Beca started dozing off a short while later, her body propped upright by Chloe’s, did everyone else realize how late it had gotten. Pressing a kiss to Chloe’s and then Beca’s slumbering forehead, Elizabeth stood up to lead the rest of the group out, promising to be back early the next morning.  
  
Mark stopped at the doorway, watching Chloe try to – unsuccessfully – rouse Beca from her sleep. Beca was kind of famous for sleeping like the dead, and Mark didn’t bother to try to muffle his laughter as Beca’s head lolled in time with Chloe’s shaking her. Heaving an exasperated sigh as Beca still failed to wake up, Chloe just shrugged and stood up from the couch.

“Need help, Chlo?”  
  
“Nah. She’s tiny and this isn’t unusual, I’ve got it. Night, Mark.”  
  
As the door closed behind her family, Chloe stared down at Beca’s peaceful face with a fond smile. Chloe would never admit to it, because even she could acknowledge that it was a tiny bit creepy, but she loved watching Beca sleep. Sleeping Beca didn’t have the automatic defensiveness that awake Beca harbored, and even though Chloe has knocked down pretty much every single one of Beca’s walls in the last 7 years, there was still that tiny crinkle between her eyes that only smoothed out when Beca settled into a true sleep. Running her finger carefully around Beca’s face, Chloe laughed when Beca’s only reaction was to crinkle her nose slightly. She pulled Beca’s slight form into her arms, proceeding down the hallway and unable to repress her laughter when she accidentally bumped Beca’s head into the doorframe of their bedroom and Beca still failed to react. She dumped Beca gracelessly on the bed, getting herself ready to sleep before coming back ten minutes later to peel Beca’s jeans off, shrugging and leaving the rest for Beca to sleep in.  
  
As Chloe laid back in the dark room and closed her eyes, she couldn’t help but wiggle with excitement that it was her last night going to sleep as an unmarried woman. Of course, the wiggle was what finally caused Beca to snort unattractively, stir just long enough to roll and drape herself over Chloe’s entire upper body, and pass back out. Chloe rubbed her back gently and let out a snort of her own.  
  
“Badass my fucking ass, Mitchell.”

 

The morning brought with it chaos. Aubrey showed up at 7am and managed to bug Beca to the point that the small girl actually woke up enough to throw a water bottle from the nightstand at her head. Aubrey finally laughed and retreated to the bathroom to help Chloe with her hair, shouting at Beca about everyone else’s imminent arrival as she left. She wasn’t wrong, and it wasn’t until Elizabeth came in shortly after and starting tickling Beca’s feet – her one weak spot – that Beca finally pulled herself out of bed. She grumped her way to the kitchen, the entire Beale (plus a Posen) clan chuckling at her along the way – and the fact that “morning person” was apparently a genetic trait made Beca truly fearful for what would happen when she and Chloe had kids – and headed straight for the coffeemaker. After slamming back two cups of coffee at a strength even Aubrey wouldn’t touch, she finally felt human enough to start her day – just in time for the Bellas to start showing up at the door, starting with Stacie and Cynthia Rose and the rest trickling in after them.  
  
The rest of the day was a bit of a blur from there. A few points stuck out vividly - Beca putting her foot down when Cynthia Rose volunteered to help her with her hair, something she wouldn’t allow “after last time”, which Elizabeth couldn’t get anyone to elaborate on; Chloe crying when she saw the flowers her dad brought for them and deciding to wear one in her hair; Aubrey – Beca completely didn’t see this coming – getting so emotional that Chloe had to sit in the bedroom with her for a bit until both of them came out a short while later with red-rimmed eyes and giant smiles fixed back in place on their faces.  
  
Honestly, Beca didn’t really give much of a crap about most of this. She’d be lucky if she could remember in a week what she did with her hair or what shoes she ended up wearing or even what the justice of the peace who married them looked like. As someone who absolutely was not a fan of weddings (and had a complicated relationship with the concept of marriage itself that took her 2 years to tease out in therapy – being afraid of commitment because of your parent’s divorce was so early 2000’s) Beca was involved in the whole shebang purely because it was clearly making Chloe’s life. Chloe, who Beca knew would have loved to have some stereotypical fairytale wedding with ridiculous DIY decorations, was doing the courthouse thing for Beca, and so the least Beca could do was be interested in the whole deal for Chloe. But there was really only so much interest one can force oneself to have in something, and Beca was a lot more interested in the marriage than the wedding.  
  
Being married to Chloe for the rest of her life? Yeah, Beca was really fucking looking forward to that. And that was the mental picture that got her through the day – through the chaos at the apartment, through the pure insanity of riding in a car with a hyped-up Fat Amy to the courthouse, through the surprise and awkward greeting of her dad who actually showed up with a few minutes to spare, and through the droning of the justice of the peace as she ran through the typical wedding babble.  
  
Slipping the ring on Chloe’s finger and leaning in for a kiss? Well, Beca was more than happy to come out of her wedding daze for that part.  
  
It wasn’t until they were leaving the courthouse that it fully sank in for Beca. As they approached the exit, Beca grinned madly at Chloe, slipping ahead to hold the door open for her, murmuring “after you, Mrs. Mitchell” to her wife – wife! – and slapping her butt when Chloe laughed as she walked through. Beca didn’t even care that she was bordering on inappropriate in front of both of their parents; this was the part where she was thrilled to soak up every little bit.  
  
Because the wedding was over, and that was great and wonderful and Beca was making a mental note to see if she could send some kind of thank you letter to Justice Kennedy with pictures of a euphoric Chloe enclosed, but this? This is the part Beca wanted all along.  
  
Elizabeth brandishing her ridiculously trendy Polaroid reminded everyone else to pull out their cameras, so the pair posed for their first photos as a married couple in front of the building (the sign still hadn’t been repaired). Chloe jokingly scooped Beca up in her arms at one point (Beca’s panic and refusal to relax several feet up in the air ruined that photo) and Beca gave Chloe a piggyback ride at another (Beca’s grimace ruined that one too). Finally done posing for pictures – or being tortured, as Beca viewed it – the rest of their crazy crew packed their crap away and immediately began arguing about where to go for lunch.  
  
Slipping her hand into Chloe’s, Beca tuned out the din and grinned at her wife as they leaned into each other.  
  
“What now, Mitchell?” Chloe inquired softly.  
  
“What now indeed, Mitchell.” Beca winked and placed a gentle kiss on the corner of Chloe’s mouth. “I guess we’ll see, won’t we?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's all she wrote, folks!  
> Thanks to everyone for patiently waiting for me to finish this (only 5 days behind schedule), accepting my weirdly shifted timeline and divergence from canon with no explanation, and most importantly for going on this wild ride with me while my "short ~2k oneshot" turned into this 5k+ mess.  
> Feel free to scream at me about whatever Bechloe feelings you have at gohandinhand.tumblr.com!

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to find me on tumblr at gohandinhand!


End file.
